The prize was founded by a
bequest from Mrs Dorinda Gorman in memory of her husband, the distinguished
Economist W M (Terence) Gorman, a Trinity College Dublin economics graduate of 1948.
It is awarded annually to the best student in the M.Sc. (Econ).
Adjudicated by John Sutton,
John Hicks Professor of Economics,
2005 W M Gorman Prize
2006 W M Gorman Prize
http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/economics/people/fellows/gormancv.htm
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William Moore (Terence) Gorman Written by |
BORN
PARENTS: Captain Richard Gorman (d. 1927), of
MARRIED
DIED
SCHOOLS
1941 Entered as a Mathematical Sizar.
1943 Elected a Foundation Scholar in Mathematics.
1948 First Class Moderator in Economics and Political Science Gold Medallist.
1949 First Class Moderator in Mathematics.
While at Trinity College
Terence won various prizes in mathematics and economics.
JOBS
1943-1946 Radio mechanic
in the Fleet Air Arm. Acting Petty Officer 1945-1946.
1949 January: Research Associate in Economics, University of
1949 October: Assistant Lecturer in Economics, University of
1951 Lecturer in Statistics and Econometrics,
1956-1957 Visiting Professor of Economics and Statistics,
1957 Senior Lecturer in charge of the Department of
Econometrics and Social Statistics,
1962-1967, Professor of Economics at
1966-1967, National Science Fellow,
1967-1979, Professor of Economics,
1970-1971, Visiting Professor,
1979-1983, Official Fellow in Economics,
1979-1980, John Hinkley Visiting Professor, Department of
Political Economy,
1983-1990, Senior Research Fellow,
1986-1998, Visiting Professor of Economics,
1987, summer, Killam Fellow,
1990-2003, Emeritus Fellow,
EDITORIAL DUTIES
Associate Editor of Econometrica 1959-1972.
ADMINISTRATIVE ROLES
Member of the Human Sciences Sub-committee
of the Social Research Council 1962-1966.
Member of the Economics Committee of the Social Science Research Council
1972-1976.
HONOURS
Fellow of the Econometric
Society, 1961.
Fellow of the
Member of the Council of the Econometric Society, 1968-1970, 1974-1979,
1984-1986.
Chair of the European Branch of the Econometric Society, 1971-1973.
Second vice-President, first vice-President, and President of
the Econometric Society in 1969, 1970 and 1972, respectively.
Honourary Foreign Member,
Honorary Foreign Member of the American Economic Association,
1988.
Honorary Fellow of
Member of Academia Europaea, July 1990.
Honorary Fellow of LSE, 1994.
Honorary doctorates: Hon. D.Soc.Sc.
PUBLICATIONS
Gorman, W.M. (1953) Community
Preference Fields, Econometrica, 21, 63-80. Reprinted in Collected Works,
Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 238-55.
Gorman, W.M. (1955) The Intransitivity of Certain Criteria Used in Welfare
Economics,
Gorman, W.M. (1957) Convex
Indifference Curves and Diminishing Marginal Utility, The
Journal of Political Economy, 65, 40-50.
Gorman, W.M. (1957) A
Note on 'A Revised Theory of Expectations', The
Economic Journal, 67, 549-551.
Gorman, W.M. (1957) Intertemporal
choice and the shape of indifference maps, Metroeconomica, 9, 1-22.
Gorman, W.M. (1957) How
surprising is a chain of coincidences, Metroeconomica, 9, 112-115.
Gorman, W.M. (1958) Tariffs,
Retaliation, and the Elasticity of Demand for Imports, The
Review of Economic Studies, 25, 133-162.
Gorman, W.M. (1959) The Effect of Tariffs on the Level and Terms of Trade,
The Journal of Political Economy, 67, 246-265.
Gorman, W.M. (1959) The Empirical Implications of a Utility Tree: A Further Comment,
Econometrica, 27, 489.
Gorman, W.M. (1959) Separable
Utility and Aggregation, Econometrica, 27, 469-481. Reprinted
in Collected Works, Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 34-47.
Gorman, W.M. (1959) Are
Social Indifference Curves Convex?, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 73,
485-496
Gorman, W.M. (1960) Tariffs
and Trade in a Two-Good World, International Economic Review, 1, 223-229
Gorman, W.M. (1961) The
Elasticity of Demand for Imports with Close, but Imperfect Substitutes,
International Economic Review, 2, 371-376.
Gorman, W.M. (1961) On
a class of preference fields, Metroeconomica, 13, 53-56. Reprinted in Collected
Works, Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 278-82.
Gorman, W.M. (1963) Additive
Logarithmic Preferences A Further Note, The Review
of Economic Studies, 30, 56-62.
Gorman, W.M. (1964) Professor
Friedman's Consumption Function and the Theory of Choice, Econometrica, 32,
189-197. Reprinted in Collected Works, Blackorby, C. and A.
F. Shorrocks (1995) 91-99.
Gorman, W.M. (1964) More
Scope for Qualitative Economics, The Review of Economic Studies, 31, 65-68.
Gorman, W.M. (1965) Production
Functions in which the Elasticities of Substitution Stand in Fixed Proportions
to Each Other, The Review of Economic Studies, 32, 217-224.
Gorman, W.M. (1967) Tastes,
Habits and Choices, International Economic Review, 8, 218-222
Gorman, W.M. (1968) Conditions
for Additive Separability, Econometrica, 36, 605-609. Reprinted in
Collected Works, Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 142-46.
Gorman, W.M. (1968) The Structure of Utility Functions, The Review of Economic
Studies, 35, 367-390. Reprinted in Collected Works, Blackorby, C. and A. F.
Shorrocks (1995) 150-81.
Gorman, W.M. (1968) Measuring the Quantities
of Fixed Factors, in 'Value, Capital and Growth: Papers in Honour of Sir
John Hicks', edited by James Nathabiel Wolfe,
Gorman, W.M. (1971) Clontarf
Revisited, The Review of Economic Studies, 38,
116.
Gorman, W.M. (1971) Apologia
for a Lemma, The Review of Economic Studies, 38,
114.
Gorman, W.M. (1980) A
Possible Procedure for Analysing Quality Differentials in the Egg Market, The Review of Economic Studies, 47, 843-856.
Gorman, W.M. (1981) Some Engel Curves, in
'Essays in the Theory and Measurement of Consumer Behaviour in Honour of
Richard Stone', 7-29,
Gorman, W.M. (1984) Towards a Better
Economic Methodology, in 'Economics in Disarray,' edited by Peter
Wiles and Guy Routh,
Gorman, W.M. (1984) Le Chatelier and General
Equilibrium, in 'Demand, Equilibrium, and Trade: Essays in Honor of Ivor
F. Pearce,' edited by A. Ingham and A.M.
Gorman, W.M. (1986) Compatible
Indices, The Economic Journal, 96, Supplement:
Conference Papers, 83-95.
Gorman, W. M. (1986)
Assembling Efficient Organizations?
in 'Essays in honor of Kenneth J. Arrow. Volume 3. Uncertainty, information, and communication.'
edited by Walter P. Heller, Ross M Starr and David A Starrett,
Gorman, W.M. (1987) Separability, in
'The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,' volume 3, edited by John
Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, Macmillian Publishers, 305-330. ISBN:0333740408. Reprinted in Collected Works,
Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 3-17.
Gorman, W.M. and Gareth D. Myles (1987) Characteristics,
in 'The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics,' volume 3, edited by
John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman, Macmillian Publishers, 403-406.
ISBN:0333740408.
Gorman, W.M. (1990) A Comment, in
'Measurement and modelling in economics,' edited by G.D. Myles,
Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 153-156. ISBN: 0444885153.
Gorman, W.M. (1990) More Measures for Fixed
Factors, in 'Measurement and Modelling in Economics,' edited by G.D.
Myles, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, 381-411. ISBN: 0444885153.
Reprinted in Collected Works, Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) 413-27.
Gorman, W.M. (1992) Educating Our Masters,
in 'Economic analysis of markets and games: Essays in honor of Frank
Hahn,' edited by Douglas Gale, Oliver Hart, Eric Maskin and Partha
Dasgupta,
Reports of various
Econometric Society meetings where abstracts from Terence appear.
Gorman, W.M. (1954) Klein
aggregates and conventional index numbers. Econometrica 22, 113-114.
Gorman, W.M. (1960) The demand for fish, an application of factor analysis.
Econometrica 28, 649-652.
Blackorby, C. and A. F. Shorrocks (1995) Separability and Aggregation -
The Collected Works of W. M. Gorman, Volume I, Oxford University Press,
Clarendon Press, Oxford. ISBN: 0198285213.
Here we list the 13 papers in the book not
given above.
Two-Stage Budgeting, 22-29.
Notes on Divisia Indices, 50-59.
Consumer Budgets and Price
Indices, 65-87.
Quasi-separable Preferences,
Costs, and Technologies, 104-14.
Separability and Linear
Engel Curves, 119-26.
The Concavity of Additive
Utility Functions, 128-35.
Conditions for Generalized Additive
Separability, 186-207.
Klein Aggregates and Conventional Index
Numbers, 261-76.
Capital Aggregation in Vintage Models,
286-320
Muellbauer's Representative Consumer,
407-10.
Aggregates for Variable Goods: An
Application of Duality, 431-38.
Aggregation in the Short
and Long Run, 443-77.
Long-Run
Aggregates under Constant Returns, 480-86.
UNPUBLISHED PAPERS AT NUFFIELD COLLEGE
LIBRARY
Gorman, W. M. (1948) Demand for Tomatoes in
Gorman, W. M. and Gareth
D. Myles (1986) 'Separability and characteristics.'
Memorial Meeting
TERENCE
GORMAN
1923 - 2003
Lecturer,
University of Birmingham, 1949-61
Professor of Economics, Oxford, and
Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College, 1962-7
Professor of Economics, LSE, 1967-79
Official Fellow, Nuffield College, 1979-83
Senior Research Fellow, 1983-90
Emeritus Fellow 1990-2003
Nuffield College Hall
Speakers:
A.B.
Atkinson
John
N.J. Muellbauer
Tim Besley
Frank Hahn
Robert Solow
A.H.
Halsey
Christopher
Bliss
Tony Atkinson
The Warden,
On behalf of the College, I would like to
welcome you all to this Memorial Meeting for Terence Gorman.
It is a source of great sadness that Terence
is no longer with us, for those who worked with him and those who were his
colleagues in
I am sure however that Terence would not
have wished this to be a sad occasion. We are here to celebrate Terence, his
life, and his deep scientific contributions. We shall be hearing more about
these from the speakers that follow.
For myself, I can distinctly remember the
first occasion on which I heard Terence speak, at a seminar in the Autumn of 1967 in
Another characteristic was his willingness
to admit mistakes, as in a subsequent exchange in the Review of Economic
Studies, where the paper was published, culminating in his 22-line article
'Clontarf Revisited', a title that reflected his historical interests
and knowledge. This paper contains the only reference in that distinguished
journal to the Song of King Gormont, from whom he claimed the Gormans to be
descended.
Re-reading his Collected Papers yesterday, I
was struck by how well Terence's 'thinking aloud' style of exposition
succeeds in conveying a sense of the way in which intellectual progress is
made. His confession in his Hicks Festschrift chapter, to 'a pair of
idiotic mistakes, which luckily cancel out' both helps and encourages
those who are trying to follow the trail he is blazing. The papers have a
freshness and vitality that mean that his work will continue to inspire new
researchers to develop further the subjects he opened up.
A number of those who have been so inspired
have told me that they are very sorry not to be able to be here this afternoon
including Chuck Blackorby and Richard Blundell. Michael Brock, who was Warden
for 10 of the years that Terence was active in the Economics Group, has asked
me to say how very sorry he is that he has an unavoidable prior engagement.
We have a number of speakers, and I have
asked them to introduce themselves. I simply want to thank them for having
agreed to participate. In particular, the College is very appreciative of the
fact that Bob Solow has flown specially across the
John Muellbauer
Professor of Economics,
Personal links
Terence Gorman was one of the outstanding
economists of the twentieth century. I owe a great personal debt to Terence in
my research and ways of thinking about economics. My first encounter with
Terence's work was as a doctoral student in Berkeley in the late 1960s, in
particular, through his writings on aggregation and cost functions, which give
rigorous backing to the every-day notion of the 'cost of living index'. I had
been primed in the tools Terence liked to use, especially duality theory, in
lectures by Dan McFadden, subsequently a Nobel laureate. Dan had been invited
by Terence to come to
I first met Terence in 1972, when applying
for posts in
It was around this time that I first met Din
(Dorinda), Terence's wife. Even then Terence was the archetypal absent-minded
professor - though his ability to think in complex geometrical spaces far from
the ken of ordinary folk, was unusually combined with
impish charm and a great benevolence to students and young researchers. The
profession and all Terence's colleagues owe Din a deep
debt of gratitude for her wonderful support and life-long, gentle sustaining of
Terence.
Terence's first great contribution to
economics was on aggregation, in his 1953 paper in Econometrica. By the time he
got the proofs back he had discovered duality theory, and apparently wanted to
rewrite the paper using the new tools. In the event, he returned to the subject
in his 1961 paper in Metroeconomica (a somewhat obscure journal today) on the
'representative consumer'. He established the conditions under which
aggregate market demand could be said to correspond to the choices of an
average consumer.
This paper implied a simple way of measuring
the distributional impact of inflation, which I explored in my first published
paper. Further research led me to ask questions about the nature of Gorman's
representative consumer to whom the Retail Price Index might be said to
correspond. In his 1961 paper, Terence was the first to represent mathematically
the required restriction on consumers' preference patterns, which for every
consumer requires the same linear relationship between spending on individual
goods and total spending (a linear Engel curve). On the standard concept of the
representative consumer, the budget shares used to weight the prices in the
Retail Price Index correspond to the spending pattern of a household with
average income. At the time, average income implied an income level around 63
percent from the bottom of the income distribution. However, by examining a
more realistic (non-linear) relationship between food expenditure and income, I
found that the Retail Price Index corresponded to an income level that was
nearer to the 70th percentile in the distribution, in other words, representing
the expenditure patterns for a relatively affluent part of the community. This
suggested a more general concept of the representative consumer, one whose
income is not equal to average income.
Terence was enormously interested in this
research and helpful to me in drawing out the implications of this new notion
of the representative consumer. He also pointed me to a further generalisation
of the general form of preferences I had derived in a 1975 paper. He discussed
this in a 1976 note, which can be found in volume I of Chuck Blackorby and Tony
Shorrocks' admirable collection of Terence's work. I was honoured when he
suggested that this work was in part a stimulus for his own masterful paper,
modestly entitled, 'Some Engel Curves' published in 1981.
His paper showed under which conditions,
quite general, non-linear Engel curves linking expenditure on particular goods
with total spending, were consistent with utility maximisation. It is a
brilliant paper, even if few, including myself, had the mathematical prowess to
follow all the steps in Terence's proofs. Developments from this work have been
heavily used, ever since, by econometricians studying individual and aggregate
household behaviour.
I have given some examples of Terence's
contributions to economics. Later speakers will show his contributions were far
more wide-ranging. To continue the personal connection, Terence's ideas about
budgeting and decentralisation in decision-making can be found throughout my
1980 book on consumer behaviour with Angus Deaton. This suggests how much the
state of knowledge then, and indeed still now, depended on his ideas. In 1981,
in part due to Terence's enthusiastic support, I was appointed a Fellow at
Nuffield, and became a colleague.
Terence as colleague and mentor to students
Terence's intellectual presence at Nuffield
was strongly felt in the lunch-time theory workshop convened by Jim Mirrlees,
in the famous Friday seminar in Economic Theory and Econometrics, and in the
Gorman workshop he established for research students. For the Friday seminars,
Terence always digested the paper in advance, never giving the speaker more
than five minutes grace before launching the first of a flood of intriguing and
penetrating questions. He was widely read in history, as well as in economics,
mathematics and statistical theory, and speakers, particularly from
Terence was endlessly supportive of
promising young students and researchers (and terrified some). Several
courageous appointment decisions of young economists with limited track
records, that may at first sight have looked risky to his colleagues, were
influenced by Terence's far-sightedness. The brilliant appointment of the
youthful John Vickers was a case in point.
A recurring concern of Terence's was his
view that established institutions, and especially research institutions, often
tended to become complacent and inward-turning, which could introduce distortion
in appointments and a deterioration in quality. He wanted
In presenting his own work, he was always
very modest and usually quite nervous. All his life he was given to
overestimating the cleverness and mathematical sophistication of his audience,
and their familiarity with the geometrical spaces in which he thought. (Though with such colleagues as Jim Mirrlees, Christopher Bliss,
David Hendry and others, one might have forgiven him this tendency).
Characteristically, he underestimated his own contribution. Though he was
elected President of the Econometric Society in 1972, he deserved even wider
recognition. The cognoscenti, of course, were fully aware of his greatness,
and, in what follows, some of them will tell us more.
Tim Besley
Professor of Economics, LSE
Terence Gorman was without doubt one of the
most distinguished economists of the 20th century and each of us here today has
our own unique memory and appreciation of him. If I have a comparative
advantage in this gathering, it comes from the fact that I was one of Terence's
DPhil students in the mid 1980s. His doctoral students (at least those for whom
he had primary supervision) were relatively small in number. However, the set
of students whom he mentored and influenced was much larger. Perhaps the main
vehicle for this was the Gorman workshop - an informal group that met after
dinner in Terence's room about which I will have more to say later.
Personal Recollections:
I distinctly remember my first encounter
with Terence who interviewed me for entry to Nuffield. I also remember his
presence in the common room soon after arriving in Nuffield as a student. I was
aware that there was a distinguished economist W.M. Gorman, but (to my
embarrassment) it took me a short while to realise that this was the same
person as Terence Gorman. In terms of mathematical sophistication I was at the
time (and sadly remain) at the other end of the spectrum from Terence. But
contrary to what might be thought from reading his work, this was no barrier to
being able to learn from him. That said, on some matters, his intuition seemed
to work on a higher plane than most others. His questions seemed always based
on simple real world observations - the antithesis of what I saw as
sophisticated economics at the time. I wanted to add bells, whistles and
equations and he always pulled things back to common sense. Overtime I came to
see that his simple insights based on common sense and judiciously selected
anecdotes contained the essence of the phenomenon in question. Only having got
this level of thinking straight was there any point in proceeding further and
pursuing sophistication.
A wonderful example of Terence's work is his
'Tricks with Utility Functions' a paper which we are hoping to
reprint along with a series of contributed articles in a future issue of the
Economic Journal. This article laid bare Terence's ambition to do
'economics economically' and he often talked of writing a book of
this title, which sadly never came to fruition, although I recently came across
some hand written chapters of this project in one of my filing cabinets. In
general, his articles are full of powerful and general mathematical arguments,
but relatively little of the motivation and discussion, which made discussing economics
with Terence so enjoyable, survive in print.
After becoming his DPhil student, I spent
hours with Terence only a few of them discussing economics. He often preferred
to discuss politics or history. He would often remark how he was advantaged in
having a good mathematical training, not because it made him a better
economist, but because it left him with more time for reading history. I also
remember the importance of his wife Dorinda. Terence would frequently ask me to
call Din in advance of any meeting that we had arranged to make sure he was
going to be there. Modern satellite navigation systems have nothing on Din's
ability to know Terence's exact coordinates at any point in time. She was
clearly a huge source of support to Terence in all aspects of his life.
Some who looked only at Terence's written
contributions might be inclined to refer to him as an 'economic
theorist' but I recall how on more than one occasion, he was careful to
push his case for being viewed principally as an applied economist. As far as I
am aware, he did not publish applications to data of his ideas. However, there
is no doubt that he was always motivated to think about concrete real world
problems. Perhaps the best-known example was his motivation of the
characteristics approach with reference to the problem of analyzing quality
differentials in the egg market. With characteristic modesty, he claimed in
that paper that its success should be viewed in terms of whether it would be of
use to the Iowan egg farmer. His contributions that helped to build the modern
consumer theory were thus 'bottom up' and certainly not constructed
from armchair reflection. My understanding is that his interest in consumer
demand first surfaced in his undergraduate thesis on the tomato market in
John Muellbauer has already noted that
Terence was extremely generous in giving his time to others with related
interests. A chat with Terence could be intimidating as well amusing. On a walk
from their country cottage to a local pub, Terence and a young colleague were
chatting and Terence made a claim about separability that the young colleague
knew to be incorrect but said that he could not remember why. Terence responded
by saying that when I say 'dit' I mean the derivative with respect to
utility, when I say 'dot' or 'dash' I mean a derivative
with respect to a price. He then proceeded to deliver several minutes of Morse
code that seemed completely incomprehensible, and finally said, 'you are
right, you are absolutely brilliant'. The young colleague had not
understood a thing except a pretty clear demonstration of who was brilliant.
The Gorman Workshop
For generations of students who passed
through Nuffield they will remember their encounters with Terence in the Gorman
workshop. Now I am sure that the workshop took place all the year round. But my
abiding memory is of being crammed into Terence's room on a winter's evening
with a small amount of artificial light and the gas fire blazing. But I am sure
that this is just a reconstructed memory based on the warmth that we all felt
in being together with Terence in his room to discuss economics at such a
formative stage.
The idea was that each student in turn would
present a written paper circulated to the group in advance. Before the evening
on which we had to present, we were called to a one-on-one session with
Terence. By the time one arrived to talk to him, the written copy was covered
in fluorescent highlighter and remarks in his rather baroque (but stylish)
handwriting. Terence was invariably kind and supportive in his comments. He
appreciated that many of us were trying to make the difficult transition from
consumers to producers of economics. On the occasion of the workshop itself,
Terence was in his element. He would illuminate, baffle and entertain in equal
measure. On the table in front us were an assortment of glasses, some mineral
water and a variety of alcoholic drinks, which I imagine (since I cannot
remember for sure) were claret, port or sherry. Terence would drink only water,
but he often remarked that he had become something of a connoisseur of mineral
water and could taste the difference between the varieties on offer - no doubt
he had in mind an economical representation in terms of a few key
characteristics.
The Gorman workshops continue to this day in
Nuffield and still bear his name. I have no doubt that these were an ideal
forum for Terence. He could tutor without lecturing and express his general
views about how economics should be done. I also recall his tendency to rank
the abilities of co-authors whose papers were mentioned during the proceeding.
Moreover, no figure in the economics profession, however established, was
spared. I dare say that some of those whose names were mentioned on such
occasions are in the room today.
Richard Blundell had the foresight to
involve Terence in setting up a similar workshop at UCL where Terence was a
visiting Professor through the mid 1990s. The UCL economics department was
proud of its association with Terence and has founded a Gorman lecture series
in his honour.
Terence at LSE
I would like to say a little bit about
Terence Gorman as a leading figure at the LSE at an important time in the
history of the economics department. He was among a key group that guaranteed
that LSE remained in the mainstream of world economics. When I knew Terence at
While at LSE, Terence also left his imprint
on the structure of the BSc(Econ) Special Subject:
Econometrics and Mathematical Economics. He was very much opposed to having too
narrow a definition of 'econometrics' in the degree. For this reason the
compulsory 3rd Year Projects were called 'Quantitative Economics Projects' and
not 'Econometrics Projects'. This meant we were able to accept a wide variety
of topics, as almost anything was OK as long as there was some quantitative
analysis of actual data. This was not without trials and Jim Thomas remembers
that Terence had some problems in persuading the External Examiner to agree
that a Project written by an excellent, but perverse student who chose to
produce a Marxist critique of neo-Classical economics without a single number
in it was acceptable.
The Legacy of Ideas
Two aspects of economics particularly
concerned Terence. First was the relationship between individual behavior and
aggregate outcomes. Although much of economics is about the study of
aggregates: unemployment, GDP, saving, etc, these are
the product of underlying individual decisions. Terence was the first to
develop a systematic framework to explore the link between micro and macro
relationships in economics. His first published paper (already referred to by
John Muellbauer) was on this subject and appeared in Econometrica in 1953.
There, he established the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a community
of individuals could be said to have preferences. This paper was original,
elegant and important; it is still widely cited today.
Second, he contributed to our understanding
of individual decisions themselves. He began from the observation that the kinds
of decisions that individuals make are enormously complicated and that
economics, as a science, needs to find a simple, yet reasonable representation
of individual actions. He formulated the idea that decisions might be
considered in two stages - first making choices over broad categories (such as
food, housing and clothing) and then making more detailed allocations. Pretty
much every economic study of demand undertaken today is explicitly or
implicitly taking advantage of Terence's insights.
The other place where I have distinct
recollections of Terence while I was a student here in
I, like everyone here today, was proud to have had the opportunity to learn
from Terence. He influenced our discipline through his writings but he also
touched us through our personal contacts with him. Terence took economics
extremely seriously and yet you could not help but feel that he found
discussing economics and ideas in general to be fun. While the standards that
he set in research are not attainable for most of us, we are at least able to
emulate his sense of fun and passionate commitment to learning.
Frank Hahn
Emeritus Professor of Economics,
Terence was my best friend. We had known
each other since 1948 or 49 when he arrived in
Terence's main interest was the theory of choice
to which he made outstanding contributions. I believe that one of his first
papers was on the existence of community indifference curves when he
established a full set of necessary conditions. Interestingly these turn out to
be important in recent results in the theory of missing markets. This led to
his work on aggregation and this in turn led him to the duality theory of
consumer behaviour. The latter he fully explored long before it appeared in the
literature. It banished nasty bordered Hessians and much old methods for the
theory of consumer choice. It substituted the much deeper and simpler notions
of concavity and convexity, and made this branch of theory really quite
beautiful. Since Terence didn't publish it, he missed the boat. Next he turned
to two-stage-choice, and aggregating that. That too was discovered
independently by others, but here his priority was quite definite, since he had
written an undergraduate thesis on a related topic. That was orderings over the
space of qualities, where he used factor analysis. This was preceded by a
thesis on the price of tomatoes, which was based on his research on the
Terence also wrote what is called the
seminal paper on the aggregation of capital, the first version of which was
published in the Festschrift for Hicks. This struck me as better and more
complete and elegant than all the previous work on this subject, which included
Leontief and Nataf and Klein. It was one of my sorrows that I could not refer
Mrs. Joan Robinson to this piece, since the mathematics was beyond her. Even
now there are people in
Terence was also an outstanding applied economist. The required econometrics he
had digested before breakfast, and caused no problem. Characteristically, I am
not aware that he chose to write or work on current problems. He put an
enormous amount of work into these efforts. I am not the right person to have
any views on this, but I know that many applied economists thought the world of
him.
I have been praising Terence, and his
wonderful mind. I do not wish to sound like a hagiographer, and so I comment on
his poorly developed sense of priorities. He would throw himself with complete
concentration and determination into anything he was doing. So Faculty
politics, a project to found a business school in England, the reading of all
of the work of job applicants, of students seeking admission to graduate
school, inevitably I was drawn into some of this, but I thought we were both
not using our time most efficiently.
Now for anecdotes, but I only have time for
two. The first concerns our joint deal with the L.S.E. Terence had bargained
for his salary, I hadn't. We compared salaries early on in our stay, at lunch,
and he rose like a pheasant from the table and raced to the Director. He told him
that he would resign unless I got paid as much as he. It all worked.
Much of his best work was in his referee's
reports. That way he ensured anonymity for his best ideas, and of course did
not publish them. He figured in a footnote as a helpful referee. In his old age
he recalled some of the occasions with, it seemed to me, some slight regret.
His wife Dorinda was outstandingly tolerant,
as anyone living with him had to be. She undoubtedly provided an anchor, which
held him to the world, and allowed him to flourish both intellectually and
otherwise.
A.H. Halsey
Emeritus Professor of Sociology, and Emeritus Fellow,
Let me first speak for all of us in offering
our admiration and condolence to Din Gorman, Terence's wife, who bore the burden
of his illness, day in and day out over many years, and now faces bereavement
with her characteristic cheerfulness and deeply Christian love.
You have been harangued by four economists
and there are two more to come. Individually and collectively, and if there
were time, they could expound the technicalities of mathematical economics to
which Terence made such crucial and brilliant contributions. I can speak only
for the rest of us, recognising that in our lifetime Economics has bestrode the
social studies like a giant while we humble and diminutive sociologist and
political scientists have peeped out from between the legs of this colossus,
always looking for opportunities of early retirement. I can, however, offer a
few valedictory if supplementary remarks.
First, I remember Terence in the 1950s as a
young lecturer at
Vive la for
And vive la for
On Ramillies, that bloody field,
The baffled French were forced to yield:
The Victorious Saxons backward reeled
Before the charge of Clares' men
What the
Terence came to an Oxford Chair in 1961 with
a Fellowship in this College. I followed the next year. We were both busy and I
remember little before he went off to LSE in 1967. Two incidents stick out.
First, there was Terence in the Seminar Room with a distinguished visiting
Japanese economist, Moroshima I think; neither could speak a word of the
Queen's English. But they happily carried on an animated conversation on the
blackboard with mathematical equations. Second, having driven him as usual to
the railway station to catch the 8.56 to
Terence came back to
That was the last time I saw him. We walked
along the corridor to his lunch passing a handsome portrait of Leonardo di
Vinci's 'Last Supper' which he pointed out as usual. It suddenly occurred to me
that the Jerusalem Society there depicted was a society overwhelmingly of young
people. I wanted to ask Terence how an economist would compare such a society
with our own. But his eyes were far away and he was leaning wearily on his
walking stick. Next time perhaps. And then I saw in
him old Simeon, the ancient Jewish elder, who bequeathed a prayer, which is
familiar to Anglicans:-
'Now, lettest Thou thy servant
depart in peace …..'
There was to be no next time. Terence died.
Our world is a sadder place without him.
Robert Solow
Emeritus Professor of Economics, M.I.T.
My father was in the fur business for most
of his adult life. In the 1930s and 40s the only job he could get was buying
furs in the
For their 25th wedding anniversary, my
father procured for my mother a fur-piece of sable. Older people here may
remember when women wore such things over their shoulders, a sort of scarf of
pelts, with each animal's jaw clenched on the tail of the animal ahead, and its
own tail clenched in the jaw of the animal behind. My father looked at the furs
wistfully and murmured: 'I may be the only person in the world who knows
just how good these skins really are.'
That is almost how I used to feel about
Terence. Even back in the 1950s, I certainly was not the only economist to
appreciate the power and subtlety of his mind--Frank Hahn did, and Paul
Samuelson, and no doubt others--but it did take a certain connoisseurship to
value him properly in those days. It did not help that his way of speaking was
almost impenetrable to any native speaker of American English. It also did not
help that his imagination and ingenuity were caught up in difficult,
fundamental, very concrete, but fairly unfamiliar branches of economic theory,
like the relation between the internal structure of preferences and observable
patterns of demand, and like the formal analysis of the connection between
individual decisions and macroscopic behavior, what we call the problem of
aggregation.
Terence was most active just when the
relation between expenditure functions and utility functions or between cost
functions and production functions was being explored.
It was an important innovation. He caught on to duality early, and what Terence
touched, he mastered. But this part of economics is a minority taste. It is a
classy minority; nevertheless you do not become widely famous that way. Even
so, as the number of his former students and colleagues has accumulated, there
is now much broader recognition of Terence's imaginativeness, depth and skill.
Among the people whose opinions Terence would have cared about, there is no
doubt about the extraordinary quality of his mind.
I once read a biography of the physicist J.
Willard Gibbs, written by a poet. She noted sadly that Gibbs's pioneering work
fell mostly on deaf ears. Apparently no one besides Clerk Maxwell is known to
have valued it. But of course a word of admiration from Clerk Maxwell would
have meant incomparably more to Gibbs than reams of praise from minor
contemporaries. I don't know if economics has a Clerk Maxwell; if it does, he
would surely have admired Terence.
Just to remind myself, I reread one of
Terence's papers, the one on 'Measuring the Quantities of Fixed
Factors' that appeared in a 1968 Festschrift for John Hicks. It is
somewhat derivative of an earlier paper of Terence's, but I chose it because I
have always been more interested in the production side of economics than the
consumption side. Just as I expected, it is an intimidating demonstration of
supreme prowess.
I don't mean that it is technically
formidable, though I suppose it is; it picks its way through a daunting thicket
of firms, outputs, inputs, factors, market prices and derived price indexes.
That stuff may be necessary to get the formal job done, but it is not
sufficient to make a top-notch paper. What really does it is that a clear and
deep intuition drives the reasoning. Terence obviously saw what had to be true.
The rest is 'merely' finding a rigorous way to get there.
The purity of Terence's vision is splendid
and, for less gifted economists, maybe off-putting. For someone like me, who
thinks that economics is much more about approximations than about theorems, it
may sometimes seem too demanding, though I am pretty sure that Terence himself
understood this problem and would have liked to avoid it. I think he was
interested even in casual observations, but was led from irresistibly them to
flights of theory.
He could be scary sometimes, intelligence
incarnate. Years ago, probably in the 1960s, I was invited by John Hicks to
give a lecture at All Souls. Terence was there. For reasons I can no longer remember,
maybe just to tease John Hicks, I decided to give a tongue-in-cheek talk, I
think a mock-serious connection between attitudes toward risk and attitudes
toward cross-sectional wealth- inequality, complete with 'policy
implications.' Terence described it to someone as a 'tour de
farce.' Then I began to worry. Did he by any chance think that I took it
all seriously? In that case he would never again take me seriously? Or did he
understand that I would take his description as a compliment? I never dared to
ask, and now I will never know.
I hope Terence knew how we all felt about
him. He was so good at what he did, and so genuine a person, that to envy him
seemed irrelevant.
Christopher Bliss
Nuffield Professor of International Economics,
All those who have spoken before me have
talked of Terence as a great economist. And that he was such is unquestionably
the case. Yet the description leaves me dissatisfied. It feels somewhat like
saying that Napoleon was a man of small stature; a proposition indubitably
correct, yet very far from being the most interesting thing that one can say
about the individual concerned. A more important truth is that Terence was a
philosopher, a deep deep thinker, and a man to whose thought the term 'penetrating'
really applies. Penetrating is a term that trips easily off the tongue, yet
Terence shows what it really means. It is the ability to go deeper and to keep
on tunnelling long after others would have given up. I will shortly discuss an
example of this from Terence's work.
Clontarf Revisited has been mentioned. I
have it here. It is so short that I could read it all, though two extracts will
serve my purpose. I start with the background. A paper by Terence on
aggregation drew from Professor Karl Vind a sharp comment in which he claimed
that a key result of Debreu's had not been cited. Terence responded in the
mildest terms, but while confessing to fault, he suggested moderate amendments
to Vind's account of the issues. It was the basis for a ceasefire agreement.
However Professor Vind did not want a ceasefire; he wanted unconditional
surrender, as his further response made clear. Terence did not disguise his
exasperation.
'Now I know how the Irish scholar monks
felt as they crouched in their round towers while the Danes rampaged below,
burning their books. Observe Professor Vind with his double-headed axe,
chastising me with one blade for not using an argument in my apologia which, so
far as it spells it out, is precisely that in the lemma he criticises, and cutting
the tail off my closing sentence with the other.'
Later in the same piece, Terence as a
superstar Absent-minded Professor:
'To make matters worse, I now learn that a referee, whose comments I
promptly lost, made exactly the same point as Professor Vind. If, as I strongly
suspect, he was Professor Vind, I can well understand his martial mood, and I
am grateful that it is directed against such a small part of my paper.'
I am inclined to think that the wonderful
self-portrait that Terence gives us in the Clontarf piece is good for more than
just the skirmish with Karl Vind. Terence must have felt on numerous occasions
like an Irish scholar monk watching savages burning his books. The Danes were
economist colleagues above all, and others also, including a one-time Warden of
this college. The scholar monk feels besieged but also distinctly superior, as
operating on a higher level than the rude mob around.
It is impossible to be as good as Terence without knowing how good you are, and
when Terence offered cutting insights and comments as if they were trivial and
obvious, he cannot always have failed to appreciate that he was in a higher
gear than everyone else on the track.
'If this were all that economists had to offer they would be parrots
taught to say supply and demand.'
Sadly most of us are parrots most of the
time. But Terence was never a parrot. He thought more deeply and saw that a
simple supply and demand account cannot work. There is no such thing as demand
for
I am not certain who first used this
approach. In the 1950s Dick Stone at the DAE in
It
is a tired cliché to say on an occasion like this: 'We shall not see his
like again'. In truth we are all completely unique, and not one of us will
or could be replaced by anyone closely similar. Yet in mourning the loss of
Terence I feel the passing of a generation of economists, from which Terence
was a golden peak. They belong to a time when economics was far less
professionalized than it is today, when graduate teaching was haphazard, and
when there were only a few books worth reading. It is always a mistake to
recall the past in fond nostalgic terms. There was a big downside to that
amateurish and disordered organization of economics. How often one encountered
tiresome people who thought that they knew everything,
and who in truth had never received a basic training in the discipline. Even
so, the changes that have scythed away the bottom have also flattened the top.
When economists came to the subject little equipped by training, putting to
work whatever they had, and casting the subject as they saw fit; then those who
brought genius could do miraculous things. What could then happen is
demonstrated by Terence's life. A cause for joy and
celebration, and something never to be imitated.
Given below are some obituaries published in
various newspapers and mailbases. Note that all record the date of Terence's
death incorrectly. We thank Dorinda Gorman for pointing this out to us.
Obituary posted to the Econometric Society mailbase
22 January 2003
W.M. (Terence) Gorman passed away on Sunday
12 January 2003. Terence was one of the most distinguished economists of the
twentieth century. He served as president of the Econometric Society in 1972.
He was elected a Fellow in 1961 along with five other Fellows: de Finetti, F.
Hahn, H. Kuhn and R. Radner. He served on the Council 1968-70, 1974-79 and
again from 1984-86. He graduated from Trinity College, Dublin in 1948 in
Economics and in 1949 in Mathematics. From 1949 to 1962 he taught at the
University of Birmingham. He held Chairs in Economics at
Terence had a lasting impact on all who met
him. He was fiercely intelligent with an extraordinary imagination; challenging
yet fun to be around. He was one of the principle architects of modern consumer
theory. His ideas are so ingrained in modern economics that we use them daily
with almost no acknowledgement. Two aspects of economics particularly concerned
him. First was the relationship between individual behavior and aggregate
outcomes. Gorman was the first to develop a systematic framework to explore the
link between micro and macro relationships in economics. His first, and still unpublished,
paper was written in the summer of 1949 to provide an answer to a question
posed about macro-economic models and their micro-economic foundations that had
been posed by Lawrence Klein. When Terence returned from his summer holidays he
was dismayed to discover that an essentially identical paper had just been
published in Econometrica by Nataf. His first published paper was also on this
subject and appeared in Econometrica in 1953. There, he established the
necessary and sufficient conditions under which a community of individuals
could be said to have preferences. This paper was original, elegant and
important; it is still widely cited today. His second major area of
contributions was the understanding of individual decisions themselves. He began
from the observation that the kinds of decisions that individuals make are
enormously complicated and that economics, as a science, needs to find a
simple, yet reasonable representation of individual actions. He formulated the
idea that decisions might be considered in two stages - first making choices
over broad categories (such as food, housing and clothing) and then making more
detailed allocations. Pretty much every economic study of demand undertaken
today is explicitly or implicitly taking advantage of Gorman's insights.
A key feature of his approach to economics
was to begin from casual observation and work towards a far-reaching and
elegant theory that could be applied to a wide variety of circumstances. Thus,
his path-breaking work that reformulated the theory of the consumer in terms of
a set of underlying 'characteristics' began as study of a desire to
understand quality differentials in the egg market. However, it is now
appreciated that comparisons across the bewildering array of consumer goods in
the majority of markets can be made manageable by thinking of them via their
characteristics.
Not only was Terence an active and
innovative economist but he was also a dedicated teacher and mentor to students
and junior colleagues. He was generous with his time and valuable time it was.
More than one discussion with Terence appeared later as a scholarly article
inspired by that conversation. A chat with Terence could be intimidating as
well amusing. On a walk from their country cottage to a local pub, Terence and
a young colleague were chatting and Terence made a claim about separability
that the young colleague knew to be incorrect but said that he could not
remember why. Terence responded by saying that when I say 'dit' I
mean the derivative with respect to utility, when I say 'dot' or
'dash' I mean a derivative with respect to a price. He then proceeded
to deliver several minutes of Morse code that seemed completely
incomprehensible, and finally said, 'you are right, you are absolutely
brilliant'. The young colleague had not understood a thing except a pretty
clear demonstration of who was brilliant.
Personally Terence was charming and amusing;
it addition he may have been the most absent-minded person in the world.
Everyone who knew him had at least one story about his absent-mindedness that
seemed more unbelievably than the last. He will be missed but his written works
remains to remind all of us that we are sitting on the shoulders of a giant.
Tim Besley
Charles Blackorby
Richard Blundell
Newspaper Obituaries
Copyright 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited
The Guardian (
SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 26
HEADLINE: Obituary: Terence Gorman:
Distinguished economist whose insights shaped the study of modern consumer
behaviour
BYLINE: Tim Besley, Charles Black-orby and
Richard Blundell
WM 'Terence' Gorman, who has died aged 79, was one of the most distinguished
economists of the 20th century. An architect of modern consumer theory, his
ideas are so ingrained in modern economics that we use them daily with almost
no acknowledgement. He provided a range of important practical and theoretical
insights into consumer behaviour, and, for more than 50 years, guided both
students and colleagues in how to model economic activities - and how to test
those models once formulated.
Gorman was raised by his mother in Kesh,
Gorman was one of a small number of postwar
economists to emphasise the use of quantitative methods in economic reasoning,
but, unlike many of his contemporaries, he insisted that theories and their
applications made common sense. Two aspects of economics particularly concerned
him.
The first was the relationship between
individual behaviour and aggregate outcomes. Although much of economics is
about the study of aggregates - unemployment, GDP, saving, etc - these are the
product of underlying individual decisions. Gorman was the first to develop a
systematic framework to explore the link between these micro and macro
relationships. His first published paper was on the subject, and appeared in
Econometrica in 1953. There, he established the necessary and sufficient
conditions under which a community of individuals could be said to have
preferences. An original, elegant and important paper, it is still widely cited
today.
Gorman's second contribution was to increase
our understanding of individual decisions themselves. He began from the
observation that the kinds of decisions that individuals make are enormously
complicated, and that economics, as a science, needs to find a simple, yet
reasonable, representation of individual actions. He
formulated the idea that decisions might be considered in two stages - first
making choices over broad categories (such as food, housing and clothing), and
then making more detailed allocations. Pretty much every economic study of
demand undertaken today is explicitly or implicitly taking advantage of
Gorman's insights.
A key feature of his ap
proach was to begin from casual observation and work towards a far-reaching and
elegant theory that could be applied to a wide variety of circumstances. Thus,
his path-breaking work that reformulated the theory of the consumer in terms of
a set of underlying 'characteristics' began as a desire to understand
quality differentials in the egg market.
Gorman's work has also had an impact in
policy analyses involving comparisons of income distribution. Any effort to
engage in serious analysis of distribution runs up against the problem of
making comparisons across different types of families. How, for example, is a family
of two adults and one child to be compared with one that has one adult and two
children? He developed a conceptual framework for 'adult equivalence scales',
which still forms the backbone of our understanding of these issues.
Gorman was also a dedicated teacher and
mentor to students and junior colleagues, though a chat with him could be
intimidating as well as amusing. Once, while walking from his country cottage
to a local pub with a young colleague, he made a claim about separability that
the colleague knew to be incorrect, but said that he could not remember why.
Gorman responded by saying that when he said
'dit' he meant the derivative with respect to utility, but that when
he said 'dot' or 'dash' he meant a derivative with respect
to a price. He then proceeded to deliver several minutes of apparently
incomprehensible Morse code, finally observing, 'You are right, you are
absolutely brilliant.' The young colleague had not understood a thing,
except a pretty clear demonstration of who was brilliant.
Personally, Gorman was charming and
entertaining; everyone who knew him also had at least one story about his
absent-mindedness. He will be missed, but his written works remain to remind
all of us that we are sitting on the shoulders of a giant.
He is survived by his wife Din, whom he met
while studying at
William Moore 'Terence' Gorman, economist,
born
Copyright 2003 The
Irish Times
The Irish Times
SECTION: CITY EDITION; OBITUARIES; TERENCE
GORMAN; Pg. 16
HEADLINE: Probably the greatest Irish
economist of his generation
Terence Gorman, who died in
Although his professional contributions were
often forbiddingly technical, they were always driven by simple insights and
down-to-earth questions. 'A penny bun costs thruppence if you've got a
wife and a child' was, for example, a characteristic aphorism he used to
motivate subtle analysis of household consumption behaviour. One of his most
widely used and far-reaching theoretical insights was
published in a paper with the disarming title: 'A possible procedure for
analysing quality differentials in the egg market.' Born William Gorman in
Kesh, Co Fermanagh, in 1923, he spent part of his childhood in
He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in
economics in 1948 and in mathematics in 1949 and spent his career in the
leading British university economics departments of the day:
Terence was an enthusiastic mentor of
graduate students, who appreciated his open invitation to a sherry party in his
office after the weekly seminar. His ability to penetrate quickly to the heart
of an argument made his participation in these seminars a delight to witness.
Time and again he would gently and apologetically expose fatal flaws and hidden
arbitrary assumptions in the presentations of visiting academics. Generations
of his students thus learnt to develop and communicate a no-nonsense approach
to reasoning and evidence.
His students however also complained that
they could rarely understand his lectures. Unaware of the need to explain
intermediate steps in his thinking and assuming the listener's grasp of the
previous literature was as wide as his own, these
lectures became something of a mystery tour. Perhaps he was aware of this and
considered it no great flaw, as he was known to have pointed to a promising
graduate student as having had the inestimable advantage of being poorly taught
as an undergraduate and thus having had to think for himself.
Thinking for himself helped Terence to
produce intellectual contributions which were fundamental and far-reaching in
their application. In addition to those which had appeared over the years in
the profession's leading journals, his Collected Papers, published in 1995,
included many important articles which Terence had either regarded as too
obvious to publish or left as incomplete drafts, which for years circulated
influentially only in mimeographed form.
Much of his work reflected a determination
to bridge the gap between theoretical descriptions of economic behaviour and
the practical analysis of real-world data. Is it possible to talk about labour
and capital when there are many different types of worker and of capital goods?
Can aggregate national data be used to explain the behaviour of individuals?
Can the degree of substitutability of some goods be measured without knowing
the prices of other goods? These were some of the questions which he addressed
and to which, in many cases, he provided the settled answers. The
'egg' paper was the first to show how the relative price of a large
number of similar but not identical goods could be analysed in terms of a few
underlying unmeasured characteristics (such as taste, style, comfort), an
insight which underpins much of the modern theory of financial asset pricing.
Much more than a lovable eccentric, Terence
Gorman built, in his quiet way, the rigorous foundations of many of the most
widely used analytical tools in economics today. Although little known to the
public here, among his many honours were an honorary fellowship from TCD and an
honorary doctorate from the NUI. He and his wife Dorinda, who
survives him, retained strong links to
W. M. Gorman: born
Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Limited
The Times (
SECTION: Features; 30
HEADLINE: Terence Gorman
Professor W. M. Gorman, FBA, economist, was born on
Economic theorist whose
application of mathematics to individual behaviour shaped modern marketing.
TERENCE GORMAN'S application of mathematics
to the study of individual behaviour had a lasting influence on both
theoretical and applied economics. His writings were exclusively theoretical
and forbiddingly technical, yet they have been widely influential in marketing
as well as economics. For instance, he propounded the view that consumers care
about a relatively small number of characteristics (speed, comfort and so on,
in the case of motor cars, for example), rather than about the many thousands
of individual products which embody these characteristics.
He also clarified the implications of
recognising that household composition influences behaviour, so that a
household of three adults behaves very differently from one with two adults and
a child, not merely in the level and composition of spending but in its
responses to changes in prices and income.
Although he was a legend to fellow
economists, Gorman neither dabbled in academic politics nor participated in
policy debates, so his name was not much before the general public. A rare
exception came when a disciple, temporarily seconded to a senior post in the US
Administration, was asked unexpectedly at a press conference to name the best
economist in the world and unhesitatingly cited Gorman.
Among his many fundamental contributions, he
clarified the conditions required to allow individual behaviour to be validly
deduced from aggregate observations, and derived the most general mathematical
expression for consumer preferences which permit consistent aggregation from
the individual to the group level (now known as the 'Gorman polar
form').
He also wrote extensively on the problem of
aggregation, which attracted much attention in the 1960s as the focus of an
often bitter debate between 'the two Cambridges' (in
The editors of his Collected Works wisely
added extensive glosses to explain the technical aspects, even to today's
mathematically trained economists. Yet he was always motivated by practical
concerns; the mathematical tools he developed have helped to simplify both
teaching and research; and his work has been enormously influential in guiding
econometric methodology worldwide.
William Moore Gorman was born in Co
Fermanagh in 1923, and spent some of his childhood in southern
Back in
He held chairs in economics at
Students sometimes found him forbidding at
first, with his incomprehensible Fermanagh accent, impenetrable mathematics and
eccentricities. But they soon learnt that his kindliness was genuine, while his
demeanour of absent-minded professor was merely a gloss on a rapier-sharp
intellect which was entirely democratic in its application: no colleague or
visitor, irrespective of reputation, was immune from penetrating queries. He
was rewarded with enormous loyalty and affection by his students, and it is
largely through his and their influence that British universities retain a
worldwide reputation in the economics and econometrics of individual behaviour.
In 1950 Gorman married Dorinda (Din) Scott,
whom he had met at Trinity. She survives him.
Copyright 2003 Times Newspapers Limited
The Times (
SECTION: Features; 43
HEADLINE: Terence Gorman
A. Severn writes: In 1950, as a young undergraduate at
Copyright 2003 The
Financial Times Limited
Financial Times (
SECTION: INSIDE TRACK; Pg. 12
HEADLINE: Architect of modern economics:
OBITUARY W.M. (TERENCE) GORMAN: The clever and engaging Terence Gorman made an
immense contribution to the way economists think about consumer
decision-making, writesRichard Blundell:
BYLINE: By RICHARD BLUNDELL
Terence Gorman was one of a small number of distinguished 20th-century
academics who changed economics. Wonderfully clever and engaging, he featured
on many shortlists for the Nobel Prize in economics and was highly influential
on the work of many Nobel prizewinners. Although his ideas are at work in many
day-to-day economic analyses, he remained largely unknown to most economists
outside academia.
Gorman was one of the foremost creators of
modern consumer economics. He made four important contributions to the way
economists think about consumer decision-making, any one of which would place
him in the economics hall of fame. His interest in consumer behaviour seems to
have begun with his undergraduate thesis at
In the late 1950s, while teaching at the
This idea is now a mainstay of modern
consumer theory, used extensively in industrial economics.
In the 1960s, Gorman also developed the idea
of 'two-stage budgeting' to simplify consumer decision-making. He
asked the question: when is it possible to simplify decision-making across
broad groups of commodities so that choices in one group can be made with only
limited information about choices in others?
Two-stage budgeting is now commonplace in
the way economists envisage consumer decisions across a wide range of markets,
from fruit and vegetables to assets. As with Gorman's work on characteristics,
he developed a new concept to match the decision-making process of consumers
but also help the analyst to make sense of the market.
Gorman's third contribution to economics was
the notion of adult equivalence scales as a method of comparing households.
Part of the stock in trade of microeconomic
policy analysis is to examine the distributional consequences of policy
reforms. For instance, would a proposed tax reform lift more families out of
poverty? Would it reduce inequality? The answers require households of
different types to be compared. Gorman came up a way to 'equivalise'
families of different sizes.
His solution is to think of the minimum
income required to achieve a level of well-being, then
consider the amount that income needs to be shifted to achieve the same level
of well-being for another family of a different composition. Gorman noted that
because children consume different bundles of goods from those of adults, this
adjustment will differ when prices change. And he worked out a consistent way
of dealing with this.
Last, he provided an extensive methodology
for linking macro- and micro-relations in economic behaviour.
How easy is it to predict the way aggregate
durable expenditure changes with growth in national income? Gorman showed the
conditions under which such a stable aggregate relationship would hold. Indeed,
this was some of his first work, published in the 1950s. The conditions he
derived turned out to be strong indeed and unlikely to be satisfied, especially
in periods of changing income distribution.
Gorman was born in Kesh, Co Fermanagh, in
1923 and raised by his mother - his father, a veterinarian, died when he was
young. He was educated at
From 1949 to 1962 he taught in the commerce
faculty at the
Honorary doctorates were conferred on him by
the universities of
Gorman was infuriatingly stubborn, yet
endearing. Notoriously absent-minded, he never really understood that many
people - even trained economists - have difficulty conceptualising economic
phenomena in mathematical terms. In many ways he was the epitome of an
ivory-tower academic - but for the best possible reasons.
Once, when I was doing my stint as chair of
the economics department at UCL, he arrived to find me in a meeting with the
then vice-provost. It was a hot summer day in
In many ways he was right; it is all too
easy for academics to forget they should be pushing frontiers and not paper.
Economics has lost one of its most original and endearing characters.
The writer is Leverhulme research professor
at University College London and research director at the Institute for Fiscal
Studies,
Copyright 2003
Editrice Il Sole 24 Ore S.p.A.
Il Sole 24 Ore
February 14, 2003
SECTION:
COMMENTI E INCHIESTE; Pg. 10
HEADLINE:
Economisti;
Gorman, consumatori senza segreti
BYLINE: Nicola
Rossi
HIGHLIGHT:
Ricordo dell'innovativo studioso britannico, recentemente scomparso
DI NICOLA ROSSI
Si farebbe fatica
a trovare un articolo di giornale o una intervista di Terence Gorman, il grande
economista britannico recentemente scomparso. Cosi' come si farebbe fatica a
trovarne posizioni pubbliche su questo o quel tema di politica economica.
Terence Gorman
era infatti un accademico e un teorico nel senso piu' proprio del termine,
capace di estrarre da piccoli problemi concreti indicazioni di carattere
generale di profondita' a volte straordinaria. E non e' un caso che il lavoro
teorico di Terence Gorman - pressoche' interamente concentrato nel campo della
teoria del consumatore - abbia consentito una vastissima quantita' di lavoro
applicato anche nell'ambito della politica economica. Dall'attivita' di consumo
interpretata come combinazione di caratteristiche elementari contenute in beni
diversi (che ci consente di capire il passaggio dal consumo di prodotti
elementari a quello di prodotti complessi come, ad esempio, i cibi pronti o i
viaggi 'tutto compreso') alle modalita' di comparazione fra livelli
di benessere di famiglie di diversa dimensione e caratteristiche (che ha
portato alle scale di equivalenza adottate dalla legislazione italiana fin
dalla seconda meta' degli anni Ottanta), all'importanza delle abitudini (e
anche dei fenomeni di assuefazione) nelle scelte dei consumatori; dalle
condizioni che consentono l'aggregazione fra beni (e quindi la possibilita' per
i consumatori di scegliere con riferimento non gia' a singoli beni ma a gruppi
di beni) alle condizioni che permettono di ipotizzare l'esistenza di un aggregato
di consumatori (e quindi la possibilita' di un legame esplicito fra micro e
macroeconomia), sono tanti i campi che portano il segno della grande
intelligenza e fantasia di Terence Gorman, arrivato piu' volte negli anni
passati alla soglia del Nobel.
Ma al di la'
delle sue illuminanti intuizioni, rimane di Gorman l'immagine di un ricercatore
straordinariamente innovativo, capace come pochi di combinare la logica
economica con lo strumento matematico ed autore di lavori di grande importanza,
rimasti per anni in forma manoscritta e con una circolazione limitata a
pochissimi conoscenti.
Cosi' come
rimane di lui il ricordo di un docente assolutamente sui generis, capace di
portare i suoi allievi li' dove questi mai avrebbero pensato di arrivare e, al
tempo stesso, capace di cambiare improvvisamente notazione matematica nel bel
mezzo della lezione e di stupirsi poi nel leggere lo sconcerto sui volti degli
stessi allievi. Quasi a dare consistenza fisica a una delle sue affermazioni
preferite: <Il processo di accumulazione della conoscenza e' spesso tanto
importante quanto la conoscenza stessa>.